U.S. Pat. No. 6,085,368 discloses a winch of the above type, that is used as a ceiling lift. Ceiling lifts have the advantage with respect to floor lifts with a mast and a lifting arm arrangement that they do not occupy any floor space. In certain rooms the ceiling lift may only be used on relatively few occasions, and it would be inefficient to keep a winch in such a room continually. Installing winches in a room only for periods of time when they are in use is not an attractive alternative because disengaging conventional hoists from a rail in a first room and engaging the hoist to a rail in another room is a cumbersome process, that often requires the use of special tools.
The rails for ceiling lifts are normally not continuous from one room to another. Moving a lifted person from between rooms that are not joined by a rail, e.g. through a door opening is very complicated or impossible with most conventional hoists. Conventional winches can usually only be operated in one orientation, i.e. the winch can either only be used in the “overhead” orientation where the winch housing is directly suspended from the rail with the spreader bar or other application suspended from the end of the extendable strap or cable, or the winch can only be used in the “upside down” orientation with the winch suspended from the rail via the extendable strap or cable whose free end is connected to the rail and the spreader bar is suspended from the winch housing. The optimum working position and orientation of the winch depends however on circumstances and none of the available prior art winches is flexible in this respect.